The Binding

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Bridget Collins has written seven books for young adults and has had two plays produced, one at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

It’s just one of the many things in his life he doesn’t understand: why did his family feel he had brought disgrace to their home? Why was he so ill before he moved to the bindery? And why does he feel hatred towards Lucian Darnay, a boy his own age who arrives at Seredith’s home one day. Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a Bookbinder—a vocation that arouses fear, superstition, and prejudice among their small community but one neither he nor his parents can afford to refuse. He will learn to hand-craft beautiful volumes, and within each he will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If there’s something you want to forget, he can help. If there’s something you need to erase, he can assist. Your past will be stored safely in a book and you will never remember your secret, however terrible. The Binding is many things: a story about the literal power of books; the power memory wields over us and our sense of identity; the perils of consumerism when it’s something personal to you that’s the commodity; that what binds us together can set us free as well as tear us apart: learning to know and accept yourself, and others, for who they are and an unapologetically romantic love story. All of which have combined to make it one of the bestselling titles of 2019, an epithet it’s definitely worthy of! If good marketing and stunning art cover lured you here under the pretence that you are going to read some genre-bending fantasy, you need to know that you have been deceived. This is essentially a romance A farm boy has a romp with an upper-class lordling his sister hopes to marry and then is sad when the world proves to be a nasty place. Ah no, sorry, my mistake. Happy ending ensues (not for the sister, though). set in a 19th century UK with such tiny dash of magic that an English tea has more milk in it, and as much plot and suspense as a shepherd’s pie recipe offers.

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But his curiosity is piqued by the people who come and go from the inner sanctum, and the arrival of the lordly Lucian Darnay, with whom he senses a connection, changes everything. OK, so here we are: the novel is overtalked, there is nothing pro- about the ‘tagonist’ and thus the interesting setting and original idea is the last hope. Especially that the description promises a whole lot of things riding on the bookbinding concept. This whole bookbinding business is half-confession and half-lobotomy (with divine forgetting instead of divine forgiving); a process that erases part of the person and transfers it into a book. It is a fiendishly clever idea! I wanted to know more: where does this power come from? how does it work? why is it that Emmet is a powerful binder (what makes the person a powerful binder and what is the difference between a mediocre one? what is exactly his strength?) how does the binding happen? None of the above is answered and the last problem is dealt with ONE SENTENCE and it reads: “how it works is a mystery boy.” The book starts strongly with Emmett, the teenage son of a farmer, apprenticed to Seredith, an old binder who lives on the edge of a marsh. Just as he is settling into his new life and learning his trade, he makes a discovery – one of the books in her bindery vault bears his name. It was hard for me to connect with this story in the beginning. The intricate descriptions and vague plot set-up had my attention dwindling. I actually considering putting The Binding down, but thankfully I pushed through, and by part two I was hooked! I read The Binding by Bridget Collins in the middle of summer and found it a satisfying read, but I think it would be perfect for autumn or winter. Its gothic, almost claustrophobic ambience has a seductive quality that draws you in. I already have my eye on Collins’ next novel, The Betrayals, which revolves around a mysterious game and is due to publish in November 2020.

I couldn't help but fall for Collins' well-written unreliable narrators, her eloquent magical prose, and the tender, fierce love story at the core of this novel." So this book has many good things to recommend it—a fascinating premise, sympathetic main characters, plus one very good supporting character, many instances of beautiful and atmospheric writing, a gothic style setting, and plenty of mystery. But the relationship between the two main characters took center stage after part one, which I feel took something away from the general story and left no room for the author to explore the act of binding or its effect on that society, especially with a change in viewpoint. The ending was also a bit too tidy for me and didn’t answer some lingering questions.Bridget Collins’s fantasy novel, her first for adults, begins sombrely, with its teenage hero Emmett being sent away from his family farm to become an apprentice to a binder of books. He’s weak after a long illness of a mysterious nature and, from his family’s strained behaviour, we intuit that he’s in some kind of disgrace he doesn’t fully understand. When he arrives at the isolated house of Seredith, the elderly woman to whom he’s apprenticed, it’s both an exile and a haven. He spends his days learning to make endpapers, tool leather, gilding – the delicate physical labour of making beautiful books. But he soon realises that the true work of binding is magical, manifested in the way that lives are turned into stories. I loved this book. The way she writes about delicate details of even smallest sensations and surroundings is amazing. Also, it’s the first time a book’s meaning kindof shifts suddenly mid-book, which was actually very interesting (in this case from just a story of Emmet to suddenly a love-story). My reasons for focusing on this is because this romance is essentially the plot. The relationship between Lucian and Emmett is what drives the entire story. The first third of the book is just set up, positioning Emmett to be reunited with Lucian. Without it, the plot would instead perhaps focus on Emmett’s journey and development as a binder. That is mostly not in the book.